There are about 70,000 illegal cars on the road of Trinidad and Tobago, according to recent media report on the Internet. Japanese insurance investigators are now in Trinidad and Tobago to clamp down on the trafficking of stolen cars from Japan, which are being sold to unwitting local drivers as legitimate foreign-used vehicles.

Japan’s crude steel output in the January-June period rose 4.3 percent over the year before to 59.41 million tons, a record for any calendar-year first half, according to an industry body.

The figure is the second-largest for any six-month period, the Japan Iron and Steel Federation said, adding the six-month record was 61.51 million tons logged in the July-December period of 1973. The federation traced steelmakers’ booming first-half performance to greater demand from the Japanese automobile and construction industries, as well as to robust exports to Asian destinations.

An official at a major steelmaker said that we expect production to remain at high levels in the coming months.

Toyota announces that it plans to become the first carmaker to sell more than 10 million vehicles in 2009.

Japan’s top carmaker said it plans to sell 10.4 million vehicles in 2009, up 6.1% from its 2008 forecast of 9.8 million

The figure includes units sold by subsidiaries Hino and Daihatsu.

Japan remained the world’s top country in terms of international patent application filing in 2005; the World Intellectual Property Organization said in a report released recently I Geneva.

Japan kept its position as the world’s No. 1 country under WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty with about 427,000 applications, followed by the United States with around 391,000, the U.N. agency said.

Isuzu Motors Ltd. Started selling an upgraded version of a device that informs trucking companies about the operating status of their drivers.

“Mimamori-kun Online Service,” jointly developed by KDDI Corp., contains a high-speed wireless communication system that transmits data on a vehicle’s operation, such as abrupt acceleration or speeding, to the employer.

Supervisors can warn drivers via the 79,980-yen device.